Pay Day: Windows Phone 7 Deal Nets Nokia "Billions"

Hmm. Remember when Nokia's Stephen Elop said the reason they went with Windows Phone 7 and not Android was because it would have felt like giving up? Well it was also very much about money. Microsoft promised more.

Billions more, to be precise, which is exactly what Elop hinted at this evening over at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona (when he wasn't fielding hostile Trojan Horse questions). Reports Computerworld:

He referred to a slide that Nokia displayed last week that showed marketing and other investments flowing from Microsoft to Nokia as part of the deal. While speculation has had that number in the millions or tens of millions, it's more than that, he said. "In fact the value transferred to Nokia is measured in Bs not Ms," he said.

Not giving up, cashing in. Same thing to CEOs, I s'pose.

That said, a "three-horse race" (Elop's words) creates a more dynamic, competitive environment between Android iOS and WP7. That's good! Just don't tell that to RIM. In his MWC remarks Elop was once again "forgetting" to mention it in the mobile OS battle, which further demonstrates his previously expressed belief that the BlackBerry has a reduced role in the platform war going forward. [Computerworld]